The brainchild of divorced duo Jimbo Mathus and Katherine Whalen, Squirrel Nut Zippers are a North Carolina based swing revival band, though this description doesn't do any justice to the breadth and uniqueness of their sound (the band tends to aptly self describe as 30's punk).
The song we are looking at today (along with it's gorgeous award winning video) is Ghost of Stephen Foster from the group's fourth album Perennial Favorites. For those not totally up on their American songwriting history, Stephen Foster is considered to be the 'Father of American Music' with a huge range of still widely performed compositions under his belt including Oh! Susanna and Camptown Races.
The song opens with less of a summoning and more of an exorcism of the muse as fiddles moan, drums thunder and radios squeal and warble. Then the Zippers kick the chair out from under you while violently whirling, stamping, growling and gnashing in a can-can of trumpets, ghosts and camptown ladies. It's the equivalent of having a shotgun filled with brass band buckshot placed against your temple while you're feverishly hallucinating and can't help but dance and dance.
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